Launching the first public charter school network to serve the incredibly vibrant and diverse South Nashville community, in 2010 our team set out to do what everyone told our Founder couldn’t be done: provide a rigorous, inquiry-based STEM education for Nashville’s structurally underrepresented subgroups, preparing each student, regardless of home language or immigration status, to graduate from college. Nearly a decade after our doors opened to our founding 5th grade class, we operate two fully built out high-performing schools serving the highest percentage of limited english proficiency students in our sector: STEM Prep Academy Middle School (grades 5-8) and STEM Prep High School (grades 9-12). In 2014, we expanded our impact to launch one of the largest newcomer programs in the country, the Nashville Newcomer Academy, serving new arrival immigrant and refugee students and their families from around the world.

Today, our team is comprised of over 100 of the most tenacious, persistent, and mission-aligned teachers, leaders, and support staff working to secure the college-graduation mission for each and every one of our students and their families. We have the ACT scores and national growth data, the accolades and awards, the parent testimonials, the college scholarship funds, and the founding alumni, the college-graduating class of 2023, to prove that what we set out to do is in fact possible. We show up for our students and for each other every single day, motivated by the incredibly hard work it takes to give our students what they deserve (what everyone said couldn’t be done).

Join us.

• Your favorite words are how and why. 
• You are insanely curious about the world around you and seek to nurture the same inquisitive nature in each of your students.
• You constantly find yourself day-dreaming about new ways to help your students gain a conceptual understanding of science concepts.
• You are a data geek. You examine your student data every day, motivated in equal parts by the gaps yet to be closed and the mastery already attained. Because you’re so data-driven, your students are too. Your students are able to articulate their own strengths and areas for growth because data is such an integral part of every lesson you teach.
• You are seeking a feedback culture – a place where admin and teachers alike are in your classroom every day, pushing you to grow and improve.
• You probably have experience working with English Learners (ELs) (over 80% of our network comes from a Non-English Language Background). Maybe you come from a Non-English Language Background yourself.  But if you don’t have this experience, you are a fit if you fully believe our country’s ELs can and will achieve, and that it’s our honor and responsibility to ensure they do.
• When faced with a challenge, your default is to be solutions-oriented.
• You are in this for the long-haul, feel called to work with this specific community, at this specific school. Our kids deserve consistency, and you are committed to providing that for them.
• You have the data, qualitative and quantitative, to show that you get results.
• Your classroom is warm, highly structured, and safe: each student knows exactly what is expected of them at all times, and they model with peers the care you enact.
• You seek to partner with the parents of every student you teach because you know that collaboration is vital to the success of this work.